Katie Clark is originally from Colorado and currently lives in Utah with her husband and son. She writes primarily for Smart Phone Health Care, but contributes to several Health Care Scene blogs, including EMR Thoughts, EMR and EHR, and EMR and HIPAA. She enjoys learning about Health IT and mHealth, and finding ways to improve her own health along the way.

EMR Templates can be helpful, but also makes life harder as well. A recent study found that 82 percent of progress notes by residents had 20 percent or more copied and pasted material. This function is tempting for physicians who need to cut time somewhere, but its something that needs to be watched out for and prevented.

In an effort to eliminate confusion that often comes during an inpatient stay, Boston Children’s Hospital has developed an iPad app. The app, called MyPassport, helps patients understand more about what is going on during their stay. It displays photos of doctors and nurses, others involved in care, as well as lab results that have been condensed to patient-friendly terms.

This is the next part of the EHR benefits series. Many doctors were thrilled to give up their transcription for an EHR in hopes of saving costs. However, some are feeling that their EHR may not be the best solution after all. Because of this, some are wanting to implement transcription services again. So, for some, eliminating transcription may not have saved as much money as some had hoped.

Physicians aren’t often given access to the psychiatric records of patients they are treating. However, a study by Johns Hopkins found that perhaps they should be. The study showed that a signficant percentage of patients whose physicians had access to both physical and mental health data had a smaller readmission rate than those whose mental health records weren’t available.

The CDC is getting into mHealth with the recent release of their mobile app. The app has many different features, such as health articles, quizzes, and a news room with information outbreaks or other pertinent information. The app is free and definitely one that should be downloaded if you enjoy hearing about health news.

After the failure of Google Health, Google is making an attempt to get into the activity tracking world. “Google Now” basically turns the phone into a personal tracking device, including for fitness. It isn’t as accurate as some of the more sophisticated tracking devices out there, but it is a lot easier to use because it is embedded into the phone. It may make it easier for people to